This blog follows the progress of restoring and converting a 1973 Porsche 914 from stock to full electric drive, with an electric motor and half a ton of batteries. Now that the car is done and in storage while I live overseas, I'm adding descriptions and pictures of each Tesla location I visit.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Engine Cover and Grilles

Bodywork re-installation is starting now, well except for the rear trunk lid, which I can't install since the body shop has had the hinges for a year and a half! I call every few months asking for them and the Targa top. Tom says "Well Mike I screwed you again... I'll paint them this week, call me on Friday." I went this week and he told me that he lost them in his shop! A guy who used to work there "moved" them and now they can't be found. Tom is buying a set from his parts dealer, will paint them and drop them off at my house. This is the first time Tom's shop being a complete mess has let me down. Oh well, as long as I get the hinges... After all of the hassle with ElectroAuto, nothing can throw a wet blanket on this project.

So that leads me to working on the engine cover and the metal grilles that go into them. There are small fixed grilles on the left and right side. A long time ago, I cleaned, sanded and painted all of the grilles gloss black and then sprayed with lacquer to keep the paint in good shape. Here are the left and right installed into place. Don't worry about the marks and dust...

The big effort was getting the grille into the engine cover, and then the P O R S C H E letters into the grille. I bought a bag of "speednuts" as the original ones were all shot from the disassembly. The grille goes in with a thin gasket along the top edge and a U-shaped gasket along the bottom edge. The pins on the grille fit nicely into the holes in the cover and then gently held into place with speednuts.

Placing the lettering was an effort in measuring and spacing. Finally I got it to look good and fastened them down with speednuts. I'm not going to install the rain-catcher under the cover as I don't think there's enough clearance between the bottom of the cover and the top of the battery box. I think I'll like the white top of the battery box showing through.

I'm holding off installing it into the car because I want to make sure I have enough working room to install the rear trunk hinges first. I will also be using Richard Rodriguez' magnet latch method. I have the magnets, but don't want to install them until the cover is in place and I understand the clearances.